Coding interviews are stupid (ish) • Hacker News Board

Re: Coding interviews are stupid (ish)

#311

Post by josephg » Tue, May 07, 2024, 9:40 PM UTC

xandrius wrote: post #289

paulddraper wrote: post #285

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I still don't get why such questions are even asked The thesis is not that these exercises are representative of work but rather predictive of performance. Sales has a similar phenomenon with sports. While there is no athleticism involved in selling, many believe history in competitive sports to be a positive predictor of sales success. --- You can reasonably argue whether leetcode accomplishes this well or poorly,…

So you're saying that someone wasting their time studying leetcode to pass a stupid game is a good indicator? I would almost believe the opposite: if you actually pass those tests with flying colours, it shows me that you believe you needed to do that to be hired, while someone who's actually experienced would never in a million years step down so low.

I believe skill at “leetcode problems” is predictive of general programming skill. Someone who can solve leetcode problems can almost certainly learn css. But, clearly from reading comments here, not the other way around.

Personally I love leetcode style problems. They’re fun. And useful - I use this stuff in my job constantly.

Re: Coding interviews are stupid (ish)

#312

Post by josephg » Tue, May 07, 2024, 9:45 PM UTC

xandrius wrote: post #297

paulddraper wrote: post #294

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I didn't state my personal opinion above, but yes I have seen leetcode aptitude to positively correlate with day-to-day problem solving.

If your company uses leetcode to filter out employees then you are a leetcode team with your internal levels and ranks, not at all representative of the whole population of skilled IT people.

How would you, or anyone, know if your career is representative of the field?

I’m sure plenty of people spend their career never learning or using data structures and algorithms knowledge. But I suspect plenty of people spend their career using this stuff all the time. Eg people who work in databases, compilers, operating systems, video games, ai, crypto currencies, and so on.

Re: Coding interviews are stupid (ish)

#313

Post by pseudalopex » Tue, May 07, 2024, 9:47 PM UTC

devbent wrote: post #288

xandrius wrote: post #257

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I still don't get why such questions are even asked as most jobs I've ever had not even remotely touched those and I've touched quite a few industries, technologies and types of companies. To me, the value of a software engineer is to ask questions, make hypotheses and be able to iterate quickly. Balancing trees, leetcode and other algorithmic stuff on the spot sounds like bringing the dreadful education system struc…

>I still don't get why such questions are even asked as most jobs I've ever had not even remotely touched those and I've touched quite a few industries, technologies and types of companies. I've had to work on tree traversal stuff multiple times in my life, anything low level GUI related will work with trees a ton. I've also had to work with hash tables directly, and with memory caching layers. I really should learn…

> I've had to work on tree traversal stuff multiple times in my life, anything low level GUI related will work with trees a ton.

How many times did you have to write tree balancing code with no reference materials?

Re: Coding interviews are stupid (ish)

#314

Post by hansvm » Tue, May 07, 2024, 9:48 PM UTC

Paul-Craft wrote: post #169

cmrdporcupine wrote: post #143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Here's my take on it: the interview is testing your ability to "show" that you absorbed the content and process of your 4th year data-structures and algorithms classes. The whiteboard process is all about showing them that you can regurgitate what those courses taught you, likely in the manner that the prof taught you. You're essentially playing "professor" for them in front of a "class", for a short period of time.…

> I think one way to do well in that interview, is to pretend you're the professor and they're a student, and you're working through course material. If that's what they want, they should give out the questions in advance, and have the candidate prepare a slide deck. No professor conducts class by having students show up and fire random questions at them all semester. More explicitly, if that's what they want, they s…

> no professor ...

That's one of the higher leverage activities for an instructor. Anyone can go read a book, watch a video, or do some practice problems, and lecturing at a bunch of students isn't a great way to convey information, either in absolute terms or compared to those alternatives. The instructor's job is to tell you which books to read, why the material matters, and contextualize the course against other things you care about. The particular road they tell you to travel depends on where you currently are, and a 2-way conversation is critical to getting good results.

Re: Coding interviews are stupid (ish)

#315

Post by hintymad » Tue, May 07, 2024, 9:48 PM UTC

davidw wrote: post #296

hintymad wrote: post #283

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Personally I think such questions have three values: - Future proof. Unless I work for an outsourcing company, sooner or later I will want to push the envelope, or so I hope I do. And to push the envelop, one needs good CS fundamentals (maybe there are some exceptions in some specialized field). Think about React. It's a JS framework, yet to invent it one needs to understand at least compiler and graph. - Geekiness/t…

> Think about React. It's a JS framework, yet to invent it one needs to understand at least compiler and graph. Are you hiring people to create new JS frameworks, or to use an existing one?

Well, I guess the example is more confusing than clarifying. I used that for a case of pushing the envelope. When Facebook needed a better solution for their feeds, they invented Reactive, and I was saying that one would need to know compiler to build JSX and need to graph to build the optimized virtual DOM. Yes, nowadays we just hire Reactive users, but my point is that in the future we may have another moment that we need to invent something, and as a company founder I sure would like to hire the author of Reactive or the like.

Re: Coding interviews are stupid (ish)

#316

Post by hintymad » Tue, May 07, 2024, 9:49 PM UTC

blindriver wrote: post #299

hintymad wrote: post #239

Assuming that a company does not look for candidates who are naturally good at ICPC-type of questions or geniuses who can come up with amazing algorithms in a matter of minutes, there is actually a different way to do coding interview: just give a high-level description of a sophisticated enough algorithm to a candidate and ask the candidate to turn that into code. I think it strikes a good balance between depth in C…

Unless you have data to show that your "different way" produces better results, your idea sounds exactly the same as every other idea, which is basically garbage. Lots of people have lots of ideas on what makes a great interview question, but none of them are backed by data. LeetCode-style algo questions USED to be an indicator of intelligence as per Google's investigation, but now it's so heavily gamed that I doubt…

All fair points, and I agree with you on rigorous experiments. For now we are talking about only intuitions.

Re: Coding interviews are stupid (ish)

#317

Post by josephg » Tue, May 07, 2024, 9:53 PM UTC

basil-rash wrote: post #278

IggleSniggle wrote: post #238

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This provided me with a fascinating, albeit somewhat familiar, piece of insight: which is that I don't really ever hear my inner monologue. I'm not sure I have one! I'm either typing out my thoughts as I have them or speaking them as I have them. I struggle in coding interviews precisely because of this: either I end up vocalizing my emotions and insecurities instead of coding, or I end up coding instead of talking a…

This is a fairly common condition, along the same lines as aphantasia (lack of inner-picture, rather than inner-voice). I do not believe there is any “cure” for it.

I don’t have a sense of a persistent inner voice either, but I can verbalise my thoughts just fine. It feels to me like the part of my brain that turns thoughts into English sentences automatically goes to sleep when it’s not being used. And that brain power can be used for something else.

When I’m doing particularly hard programming work, I can’t have words said near me. Even music with lyrics messes me up. I think because it wakes up my “thoughts to English” pathway and that gets in the way of my “thoughts to code” pathway.

Anyway, I don’t want to be cured. There’s nothing wrong with my mind. If anything I feel sorry for people who can’t turn off their inner dialogue, because it means they can never use those neurons for other tasks - like maths or programming.

Personally I can talk while programming if an interviewer wants that, but I’ll be a bit dumber at the keyboard than if I sat in silence.

Re: Coding interviews are stupid (ish)

#318

Post by blindriver » Tue, May 07, 2024, 9:53 PM UTC

godelski wrote: post #307

blindriver wrote: post #299

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unless you have data to show that your "different way" produces better results, your idea sounds exactly the same as every other idea, which is basically garbage. Lots of people have lots of ideas on what makes a great interview question, but none of them are backed by data. LeetCode-style algo questions USED to be an indicator of intelligence as per Google's investigation, but now it's so heavily gamed that I doubt…

> Unless you have data to show that your "different way" produces better results, your idea sounds exactly the same as every other idea, which is basically garbage. Do you have evidence that the standard coding interview works? (There's evidence that it doesn't) I'm with you that the claim might be too strong to say "this is the way" but that's because I'm of the (very strong) opinion that interviewing is an extremel…

> Do you have evidence that the standard coding interview works?

No, I think that they are all garbage.

The only way to really hire is by having a vibe check to see if they are someone the team wants to work with, making sure that the person seems competent and has a reasonable chance of being very productive, and then hiring them quick. Give them a month and if they don't seem like a good fit, then fire them, with 2 months severance.

This is the only way I've seen that will produce a great team quickly, by hiring quickly and firing quickly. This is similar to what Netflix does but they also pay top of market which not too many companies can afford, but it produces the best results.

Re: Coding interviews are stupid (ish)

#319

Post by [deleted] » Tue, May 07, 2024, 9:54 PM UTC

godelski wrote: post #310

xandrius wrote: post #257

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I still don't get why such questions are even asked as most jobs I've ever had not even remotely touched those and I've touched quite a few industries, technologies and types of companies. To me, the value of a software engineer is to ask questions, make hypotheses and be able to iterate quickly. Balancing trees, leetcode and other algorithmic stuff on the spot sounds like bringing the dreadful education system struc…

> if a senior person can't in 30/45 min of talking with someone figure out the general experience level then the problem is them, really. This is why I've always been so confused. Why is the software engineering interview wildly different from the traditional engineering interview (seniors sit down with candidates and discuss how to solve a relevant proxy problem the team is currently undergoing (has the side benefit…

[deleted]

Re: Coding interviews are stupid (ish)

#320

Post by jjtheblunt » Tue, May 07, 2024, 9:54 PM UTC

hintymad wrote: post #239

Assuming that a company does not look for candidates who are naturally good at ICPC-type of questions or geniuses who can come up with amazing algorithms in a matter of minutes, there is actually a different way to do coding interview: just give a high-level description of a sophisticated enough algorithm to a candidate and ask the candidate to turn that into code. I think it strikes a good balance between depth in C…

What is ICPC?